Introduction

The Voodoo 2 removed NVIDIA from the top of the list and shoved them down quite a few pegs, since the Voodoo 2 could do 4x the amount of work as the Riva128 and still only use PCI interface and with 12MB memory models available it seemed like a hard road ahead for NVIDIA, but nothing was further from the truth.

NVIDIA took the Riva core back to the drawing board, wiping S3 and Intel from their competitors list, they focused on taking over the top 3D role from 3Dfx, this was achieved when NVIDIA released the first of the famous 128bit 3D graphics processors, the TNT.

The TNT was a new design for NVIDIA, unlike the Voodoo 2 using single textel engine the TNT was Twin Textile, Allowing 2x the operational capacity of the Voodoo 2, and with a 16MB frame buffer well you can see what a difference this would make.

After the TNT, NVIDIA really didn’t produce any new ground breaking technologies. TNT2 was simply a TNT with a higher core clock and 32MB frame buffer. It wasn’t until NVIDIA needed to remove the S3 Savage 2000 from their list did they come up with a new strategy; NVIDIA used the TNT2 core and added a few new features. So became what we now know as the GeForce video card.

Since the GeForce was introduction we have seen new variations come out with higher clocks, new faster DDR memory and even the addition of a Hardware T&L engine to reduce the amount of CPU power needed to process 3D applications.

ASUS has been the biggest follower of NVIDIA, building at least one or more video cards based on NVIDIA’s chipsets. Today we have the GeForce 4 Ti4600 video card from ASUS in the labs, and I am more than anxious to find out what it can do, so lets first have a look at the GeForce 4 in a bit of details and then we will get to the goodies. Kick back as we take you on a discovery of the brand new GeForce4 Ti4600, aka NV25!